The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers Page B

himself. He yawned and leaned back against a sack of onions. “Wake me up when we get to the city,” he said, and let the boat rock him to sleep.

CHAPTER 3
“Shamefast he was to come to Towne, But meet with no one save a Clowne.”
—Old Ballad
    Though the actual fish market of Billingsgate was the big shed on the river side of Lower Thames Street, the carts of costermongers, heaped with turnips and cabbage and carrots and onions, were jammed wheel hub to wheel hub along the length of Thames Street from the Tower Stairs in the east, by the white medieval castle with flags flying from its four towers, west past the Grecian facade of the Customs House, past the eight crowded quays to Billingsgate Market, and past that to just west of London Bridge; and the clamorous, milling commerce filled the entire street, from the alleys in the north face of Thames Street to where the pavement dropped away to the river ten feet below, and the ranked oyster boats moored to the timbered wharf, with planks laid across their jostling gunwales, formed a narrow, bobbing lane the costermongers called Oyster Street.
    Doyle, leaning against an outside corner of the fish barn, was certain he’d walked over every foot of the whole scene during the course of the morning. He looked down with distaste at his basket of scrawny onions, and wished he hadn’t tried to allay his considerable hunger by eating one of them. He patted his pocket to make sure he hadn’t lost the four pennies he’d earned. Everything you make above one shilling you can keep, Chris had told him the last time Doyle and Sheila had stopped by the boat; by now you must know the way of it, and you can do a few rounds all by yourself. And then he had handed Doyle a basket filled with what had to be the poorest-looking onions in the whole boatload, and sent him off in one direction and Sheila in another. The morbid girl hadn’t been the best company, but he missed her now. And a shilling is twelve pennies, he thought hopelessly; I’ll never even make that much with these wretched vegetables, much less any more, any bunt, as they call it, for myself.
    He levered himself away from the wooden wall and plodded away in the direction of the Tower again, holding his basket in front of him. “Onions!” he called half-heartedly. “Who’ll buy these fine onions?” Sheila had taught him the litany.
    A coster’s wagon, its bed empty, was rumbling past, and the evidently prosperous old fellow on the driver’s seat looked down at Doyle and laughed. “Onions you call those things, mate? I’d call ‘em rat turds.”
    This brought merriment from the nearby members of the crowd, and a tough-faced boy ran up and nimbly kicked the bottom of Doyle’s basket so that it flew up out of his hands and the vegetables in question showered down around him. One thumped him on the nose, and the laughter doubled.
    The coster on the cart pursed his lips, as though he hadn’t quite intended to provoke all this. “You’re a pitiful sod, ain’t you?” he said to Doyle, who was just standing there dazedly watching the impromptu soccer with onions game the street boys had started up. “Here—take twice what they were worth. Here, damn you, wake up!” He dropped two pennies into the hand Doyle automatically held out, then goaded his horse forward.
    Doyle pocketed the coins and looked around. The crowd had lost interest in him. The onions—even the basket—were nowhere to be seen. No point going any further, he thought, and began trudging back toward the river in defeat.
    “Ah, there’s one of the Dolorous Brethren!” piped a weird high voice like Mickey Mouse’s. “Just had his onions stomped into Pavement Soup, haven’t you now, sir?”
    Startled and embarrassed, Doyle looked up and saw that he was being addressed by a gaudily painted puppet in a tall booth that had even gaudier pictures of dragons and little men all over the front of it. There was a scanty audience of ragged boys and a few